SLC interviews nine for superintendent position

SCHROON LAKE-The Schroon Lake Central School Board of Education this past week interviewed nine candidates for the school superintendent position.

Interviews were held March 14-16 and represent the first round in a four-week process of choosing the district's new chief, according to School Board President John Armstrong.

In the coming week, the second round of interviews will be held and will include participation from a panel of community stakeholders, such as teachers. During Round Two, the applicants will spend a day in Schroon Lake, starting with lunch at the school cafeteria and continuing with tours of the building and the community.

Round Three will be held the final week of March and will be followed by Round Four in the first week of April. The interviewing process will include site visits of the finalists' hometowns by school officials.

Applications for the superintendent's position came from all over New York and the Northeast, according to Armstrong, and they were collected and sorted by staff at the Champlain Valley Educational Services, which serves 17 school districts in Essex, Clinton, Warren and Washington counties.

"We had a fairly large pool of applicants," Armstrong said.

The School Board then whittled down the applicants to the nine interviewed this past week.

The School Board will not be releasing the names of the applicants until the third round of interviews.

"Out of deference to those who have applied in these early phases, we thought that would be best," Armstrong said.

The district's current superintendent -Gerald Blair - was hired on an interim basis for the 2010-11 school year. He replaced Michael Bonnewell, who left the position on June 30, 2010, after 10 years to take the superintendent's job at the Albion Central School District in Orleans County.

Armstrong said he expects the new superintendent to be on the job by the beginning of the fiscal year, July 1. Although a salary has not yet been determined, the salary was advertised at a range between $110,000 and $125,000. Blair said he is currently making $85,000 with no benefits.